Category: Science

Life, Science, Work

Chaos and Complexity

20120428-170548.jpgI typed ‘Where does complexity come from given entropy?’ into Google this morning. Why? Because my life and work are in pretty good order, so a law of physics which threatens to mess them up is most inconvenient.

Given how hard it is to get anything done at work, given how fragile our lives and life’s works are and given the formidable obstacles to multicellular life a – how on earth do we get from chaos to complexity.

Before Googling, I’d read in the New Scientist that Precambrian alkaline oceans may have forced floppy-walled cells to get a shell – to keep the toxic alkalinity out. Alkaline oceans would also have promoted calcification. A problem and a solution jostling together.

I also read E.O. Wilson, the Harvard sociobiologist, explaining that the simplest way to understand complex human motivations, is the constant competitive/cooperative interplay between our loyalty to ourselves and that we pay to tribes and collectives -which give us faith, identity, mythologies and protection.

Speaking of which, high up the Google list of answers to my complexity vs entropy question was our old friend God. If the second law of thermodynamics demands increasing entropy, then a creator and His constant intervention seem to some like our only hope.

But I’m reminded of the classic sociological example I cited at work this week, in favour of not planning big things too much. You’re never more than five minutes from fresh bread in chaotic Paris but couldn’t get it anywhere in centrally planned Moscow – ecosystems are too complex to plan or design.

Instead of God, I preferred a great paper, which came top of the highly evolved ecosystem which is the Google search rank. MIT physicist Michel Baranger writes that the 20th century ‘certainty’ of scientific analysis has given way to the chaos of fractals and non-linearity.

Baranger admits complexity still defies a simple definition. But it does have these six features:

1) Complex systems contain many constituents interacting chaotically.

2) The constituents of a complex system are interdependent.

3) A complex system possesses a structure spanning several scales. (cell, leg, person; building, district, city)

4) A complex system is capable of emergent behaviour. (properties emerge at a higher level which are more than a description of the constituent parts – consciousness, life, society, culture)

5) Complexity involves an interplay between chaos and non-chaos. (if it’s all chaos nothing happens, if there’s no chaos nothing happens either)

6) Complexity involves an interplay between cooperation and competition for resources (the big one – drives reactions, feedback loops, religion, ethics, moral dilemmas, kindness and cruelty)

Fully embracing the messiness of chaos and complexity opens up the possibility that we might come to better understand the biological and social systems which drive us, and which we in turn drive.

The answers won’t be in neat models. But they would be a small step towards what E.O. Wilson calls a ‘New Enlightenment’. An Enlightenment built not on the determinism of Newton’s calculus and Adam Smith’s pin factory. Or on the individualism and reductionism of pure ‘survival of the fittest’. But one recognising that complexity comes from the jostling of chaos and order, competition and cooperation, small scale and large and interdependence of the whole.

What does that mean for my efforts to maintain a well-ordered life? Accepting a meteorite could flatten our house. That disagreements at work and at home are probably the drivers of progress. And that the competing demands on me create, yes, chaos; but also new complexity and the spur to creativity.

A reminder then that chaos and change can’t be avoided – you can only ride the waves not hold back the tide.

Life, Philosophy, Science

Amor Fati

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This week, my mind was briefly boggled by this most detailed ever picture from a space telescope. It purports to show 200,000 galaxies.

Our nearest star – on the most optimistic estimates – would take some 10,000 years to visit. And that’s one star, in the billion, in one galaxy, of the 200,000, you can see in this picture. Make you feel just a little insignificant.

On the same day into my inbox dropped a relevant entry, in the self-styled ‘Intellectual Devotional’ I get by email from dailylit.com. Duff title but there is the odd cracker in there.

‘Transcendent Significance’ is a good one. We all like to think our lives have a transcendent significance. Hence narcissism, religion, artistry, poetry, politics… and Nietzsche.

Why Nietzsche? Because one answer to transcendent significance according to the Intellectual Devotional is:

The doctrine of “eternal recurrence”, which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur ad infinitum, in a self-similar form. Rooted in Indian and Egyptian philosophy, and taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics, with the fall of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept of was gradually lost.

Enter Nietzsche who gave “eternal recurrence” a second chance, as a reason to affirm life in the face of a world without God:

“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it… but to love it.”

I’m not sure I can go the whole hog on Nietzsche – and want nothing different in all eternity. But I can have a decent crack at wanting nothing different in the here and now.

Is there a better place in those 200,000 galaxies? Maybe, but probably not. Has there been a better time to live in human history? Almost certainly not. Healthy happy middle age on planet earth in the 21st century has its compensations. Amor fati – what’s not to like?

Art, Life, Odysseus, Science

Daubing

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I read a while ago that physicists were arguing over the wisdom of analysing the complete dataset from the latest probe which is measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Why? Because from it we will soon have all the data it is possible for us to have on the origins of the universe. And if we analyse it all, we will have closed the book of history on our ultimate origins – there will be nothing more for future generations of physicists to know.

I was reminded of this by a lively conversation on the history of Western Art the other day. I’ve recently bought myself a primer which takes you from cave paintings to cubism and contemporary modern art.

In the early pages, just how small the sliver is, of what survives from antiquity, becomes obvious. There are no paintings, often no original statues and incredibly few fragments from entire cities, kingdoms and civilisations. The ‘cosmic background radiation’ of western culture is largely mapped. What we have is probably all there is.

But although only a fragment, it has been a treasure trove down the centuries. In the writings of Montaigne, his many references to Plutarch, Seneca, Horace et al were the ‘classical education’ which in his time (or in fact slightly before it as he lamented) were the gold standard. A Renaissance man who knew his ‘Greats’, knew everything that was worth knowing.

Paraphrasing Wikipedia, perhaps there is still something to be said for ‘Philo’s Rule’ of ‘classical education’: preserving those words and ideas which impart intellectual and aesthetic appreciation of “the best, which has been thought and said in the world”.

For the polymath, history is the easiest framework on which to hang intellectual curiosity. The past is finite. But, unlike the cosmic background radiation, the arrow of time for the living is forwards – at least for a few decades.

So, I think there’s a balance to strike between a good investment in “the best” that has been thought, said and painted, and keeping abreast of the ephemera of today. History has winnowed and filtered, but it has also carelessly and randomly mulched, ignored and forgotten.

Time marches on. And who knows which of today’s ‘cave paintings’ will be remembered 10,000 years from now. Daubing is as important as appreciating the daubing of others.

Life, Psychology, Science

Awkward or Orchid

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A fascinating article in the New Scientist puts forward the theory of ‘Orchid’ genes. The theory – and a variety of evidence – suggests 5-7 relatively recent gene variants (recent in evolutionary terms at least) work cumulatively and in combination to make people more or less ‘plastic’, responsive and sensitive to their upbringing and environment.

Once branded as ‘bad genes’ they now appear to be ‘adaptive’ genes. So, put ‘Orchid’ children in a good environment and they thrive. In a bad one and they develop anti-social behaviours.

As adults, ‘Orchids’ have the behavioural range to bring sensitivity and finesse to a positive context. But they are more volatile in a bad one. The other extreme from Orchids – Dandelions – cope fine with most situations.

Here’s a heavily abridged version of David Dobbs’ article. Fascinating stuff. I reckon I might be a lucky Orchid – lucky to have been carefully nurtured with a very caring and supportive upbringing.

But I also recognise that if you put me in a bad context – my secondary school to some extent, and working in UK Government to a very large extent – my leaves wilt and the ‘flower’ at my heart turns dark.

At times a bit more ‘Dandelion’ in my genes might have made me a happier camper, but we are who we are:

The genes that help create some of our most grievous frailties – anxiety and aggression, melancholia and murder – may also underlie our greatest strengths, from the sharing of meals to our spread around the globe.

Back in 1995, W. Thomas Boyce, a child development specialist then at the University of California, Berkeley, had been trying to understand why some children seemed to react more to their environment in measures ranging from heartbeat and blood pressure to levels of cortisol, a hormone related to stress.

Boyce was soon joined in this line of inquiry by Bruce Ellis at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Together they speculated that this reactivity also affects mood and behaviour.

Drawing on Swedish terms, they distinguished between “dandelion children”, who did about the same whatever their environment, and “orchid children”, who wilted under poor care but flourished if carefully tended (Development and Psychopathology, vol 17, p 271).

Many vulnerability-gene studies seemed to show that the so-called ‘bad’ variants of SERT, DRD4, and MAOA generated extra resilience and other assets in people with fortunate early years. Yet the literature largely ignored this upside: in paper after paper, the raw data and graphs indicated the positive effects, but the text failed to explore or even note them.

Others began publishing new studies and re-analyses of old ones showing that the so-called ‘vulnerability’ genes created not just risk but bidirectional sensitivity.

“These genes aren’t about risk,” says Jay Belsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who helped establish what is being called the plasticity gene hypothesis. “It is responsiveness – for better or worse.”

Belsky is doing bigger studies that gauge the cumulative effects of several plasticity genes. In 2010, he published an analysis drawn from a 12-year study of 1586 adolescents. He analysed five genes (SERT, MAOA, DRD4, and two other genes that regulate dopamine) and collected data on the teens’ behaviour and self-control, and on the mothers’ engagement in their lives.

The boys with no or only one plasticity variant proved to be dandelions: they fared about the same regardless of how engaged their mothers were. Those with two to five plasticity variants, however, responded like orchids, and the more they had, the more sensitive they were.

The orchid hypothesis also meshes with observations of adults in psychotherapy. Since 1997, Californian psychiatrists Elaine and Arthur Aron have written about what they call “highly sensitive persons”, or HSPs, who are especially responsive not just to trouble but to many of life’s pleasures and subtleties. As Elaine Aron sees it, this group, comprising an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the population, perceive life at a finer, more nuanced scale.

As the plasticity theory has gained ground, the Arons and others have wondered if HSPs are essentially orchid children grown up. They argue that HSPs share with the orchid children a particularly reactive physiological and sensory response to the world.

Many of the orchid-theory supporters argue that even with its drawbacks, sensitivity is more often than not adaptive – and therefore selected for. This idea has gained credence by the discovery over the last decade that many of the plasticity genes have spread rapidly through humankind over the last 50,000 years.

Of the leading orchid-gene variants – the short SERT, the 7R DRD4 and the more plastic version of MAOA – none existed in humans 80,000 years ago. Since emerging, these variants have spread into 20 to 50 per cent of the population. “That’s not random drift,” says John Hawks, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They’re being selected for.”

Orchid genes could provide an advantage in several ways. To start with, they seem to create better mental health and greater resilience in people with secure, stimulating childhoods. The “problem” traits they can generate, such as anxiety, aggression or ADHD, could help survival in conflict-ridden or volatile environments. Plasticity genes also boost resilience at the group level by creating a mix of steady do-ers (dandelions) and individuals with greater behavioural range (orchids).

Some evolutionary anthropologists argue that these traits, particularly the restlessness and risk-taking found in many carriers of the 7R DRD4, may have helped drive human expansion.

The set of genes that help create our most grievous frailties may also underlie our greatest strengths – and sometimes the choice is settled in childhood.

http://daviddobbs.net/